The Impact of Implicit Racial Bias on the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion

The Article is organized as follows: Part II provides an introduction to implicit bias research, orienting readers to the important aspects of implicit bias most relevant to prosecutorial discretion. Part III begins the examination of implicit bias in the daily decisions of prosecutors. The Part presents key prosecutorial discretion points and specifically connects each of them to implicit bias. Part IV recognizes that, despite compelling proof of implicit bias in a range of domains, there is no direct empirical proof of implicit bias in prosecutorial decision-making. It thus calls for an implicit bias research agenda designed to further examine how and when implicit bias affects prosecutorial decision-making, including studies designed to test ways of reducing the harms of these biases. It then begins a necessarily early look at potential remedies for the harms associated with implicit bias in prosecutorial discretion

The Impact of Implicit Racial Bias on the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion

The Article is organized as follows: Part II provides an introduction to implicit bias research, orienting readers to the important aspects of implicit bias most relevant to prosecutorial discretion. Part III begins the examination of implicit bias in the daily decisions of prosecutors. The Part presents key prosecutorial discretion points and specifically connects each of them to implicit bias. Part IV recognizes that, despite compelling proof of implicit bias in a range of domains, there is no direct empirical proof of implicit bias in prosecutorial decision-making. It thus calls for an implicit bias research agenda designed to further examine how and when implicit bias affects prosecutorial decision-making, including studies designed to test ways of reducing the harms of these biases. It then begins a necessarily early look at potential remedies for the harms associated with implicit bias in prosecutorial discretion

Addendum soils investigation -- Kuikahi Gardens, Kalihi Street, Kalihi-Uka, Honolulu, Hawaii

W.O. 344-10Sections: field exploration, soils, history of sliding, recommendations, grading plan, cross sections, boring logs, laboratory testing, and laboratory data.Mid-Pac Development, Ltd

Do (and say) as I say: Linguistic adaptation in human-computer dialogs

© Theodora Koulouri, Stanislao Lauria, and Robert D. Macredie. This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.There is strong research evidence showing that people naturally align to each other’s vocabulary, sentence structure, and acoustic features in dialog, yet little is known about how the alignment mechanism operates in the interaction between users and computer systems let alone how it may be exploited to improve the efficiency of the interaction. This article provides an account of lexical alignment in human–computer dialogs, based on empirical data collected in a simulated human–computer interaction scenario. The results indicate that alignment is present, resulting in the gradual reduction and stabilization of the vocabulary-in-use, and that it is also reciprocal. Further, the results suggest that when system and user errors occur, the development of alignment is temporarily disrupted and users tend to introduce novel words to the dialog. The results also indicate that alignment in human–computer interaction may have a strong strategic component and is used as a resource to compensate for less optimal (visually impoverished) interaction conditions. Moreover, lower alignment is associated with less successful interaction, as measured by user perceptions. The article distills the results of the study into design recommendations for human–computer dialog systems and uses them to outline a model of dialog management that supports and exploits alignment through mechanisms for in-use adaptation of the system’s grammar and lexicon

Universal typological dependencies should be detectable in the history of language families

1. Introduction We claim that making sense of the typological diversity of languages demands a historical/evolutionary approach.We are pleased that the target paper (Dunn et al. 2011a) has served to bring discussion of this claim into prominence, and are grateful that leading typologists have taken the time to respond (commentaries denoted by boldface). It is unfortunate though that a number of the commentaries in this issue of LT show significant misunderstandings of our paper. Donohue thinks we were out to show the stability of typological features, but that was not our target at all (although related methods can be used to do that: see, e.g., Greenhill et al. 2010a, Dediu 2011a). Plank seems to think we were arguing against universals of any type, but our target was in fact just the implicational universals of word order that have been the bread and butter of typology. He also seems to think we ignore diachrony, whereas in fact the method introduces diachrony centrally into typological reasoning, thereby potentially revolutionising typology (see Cysouw’s commentary). Levy & Daumé think we were testing for lineage-specificity, whereas that was in fact an outcome (the main finding) of our testing for correlated evolution. Dryer thinks we must account for the distribution of language types around the world, but that was not our aim: our aim was to test the causal connection between linguistic variables by taking the perspective of language evolution (diversification and change). Longobardi & Roberts seem to think we set out to extract family trees from syntactic features, but our goal was in fact to use trees based on lexical cognates and hang reconstructed syntactic states on each node of these trees, thereby reconstructing the processes of language change

Variable and Transient Radio Sources in the FIRST Survey

A comprehensive search for variable and transient radio sources has been conducted using ~55,000 snapshot images of the FIRST survey. We present an analysis leading to the discovery of 1,627 variable and transient objects down to mJy levels over a wide range of timescales (few minutes to years). Variations observed range from 20% to a factor of 25. Multi-wavelength matching for counterparts reveals the diverse classes of objects exhibiting variability, ranging from nearby stars and pulsars to galaxies and distant quasars. Interestingly, more than half of the objects in the sample have either no classified counterparts or no corresponding sources at any other wavelength and require multi-wavelength follow-up observations. We discuss these classes of variables and speculate on the identity of objects that lack multi-wavelength counterparts.Comment: 63 pages, 18 encapsulated postscript figures (19 if individual subfigures are counted), 3 tables. LaTeX style file fltpage.sty used. Submitted, accepted and "in press" for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Full electronic version of table 1 (tab1.txt) has been uploaded and can be obtained after extracting the zipped source fil

Environmental regulation induced foreign direct investment

The last decade has witnessed a renewed interest in the relationship between environmental regulations and international capital flows. However, empirical studies have so far failed to find conclusive evidence for this so-called pollution haven or race to the bottom effect where foreign direct investment (FDI) is assumed to be attracted to low regulation countries, regions or states. In this paper we present a simple theoretical framework to demonstrate that greater stringency in environmental standards can lead to a strategic increase in capital inflows which we refer to as environmental regulation induced FDI. Our result reveals a possible explanation for the mixed results in the empirical literature and provides an illustration of the conditions under which environmental regulations in the host country can affect the location decision of foreign firms

Search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson with the OPAL Detector at LEP

This paper summarises the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in e+e- collisions at centre-of-mass energies up to 209 GeV performed by the OPAL Collaboration at LEP. The consistency of the data with the background hypothesis and various Higgs boson mass hypotheses is examined. No indication of a signal is found in the data and a lower bound of 112.7GeV/C^2 is obtained on the mass of the Standard Model Higgs boson at the 95% CL.Comment: 51 pages, 21 figure

Cyclotron Maser Emission from Blazar Jets?

We consider the production of electron cyclotron maser emission by low-density, highly magnetized plasmas in relativistic jets. The population inversion required to drive cyclotron maser instability could occur in localized, transient sites where hydromagnetic instabilities, shocks, and/or turbulence lead to magnetic mirroring along current-carrying flux tubes. The maser is pumped as electrons are accelerated by the parallel electric field that develops as a result of the mirror. We estimate the maximum brightness temperatures that can be obtained in a single maser site and in an array of many masers operating simultaneously, under conditions likely to apply in blazar jets. Synchrotron absorption, by relativistic electrons within the jet, presents the largest obstacle to the escape of the maser radiation, and may render most of it invisible. However, we argue that a high brightness temperature could be produced in a thin boundary layer outside the synchrotron photosphere, perhaps in the shear layer along the wall of the jet. Induced Compton scattering provides additional constraints on the maximum brightness temperature of a masing jet. We suggest that recent observations of diffractive scintillation in the blazar J1819+3845, indicating intrinsic brightness temperatures greater than 10^{14} K at 5 GHz, may be explained in terms of cyclotron maser emission. High brightness temperature maser emission from blazar jets may extend to frequencies as high as ~100 GHz, with the maximum possible T_B scaling roughly as 1/frequency. Less massive relativistic jet sources, such as microquasars, are even better candidates for producing cyclotron maser emission, primarily in the infrared and optical bands.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Colour reconnection in e+e- -> W+W- at sqrt(s) = 189 - 209 GeV

The effects of the final state interaction phenomenon known as colour reconnection are investigated at centre-of-mass energies in the range sqrt(s) ~ 189-209 GeV using the OPAL detector at LEP. Colour reconnection is expected to affect observables based on charged particles in hadronic decays of W+W-. Measurements of inclusive charged particle multiplicities, and of their angular distribution with respect to the four jet axes of the events, are used to test models of colour reconnection. The data are found to exclude extreme scenarios of the Sjostrand-Khoze Type I (SK-I) model and are compatible with other models, both with and without colour reconnection effects. In the context of the SK-I model, the best agreement with data is obtained for a reconnection probability of 37%. Assuming no colour reconnection, the charged particle multiplicity in hadronically decaying W bosons is measured to be (nqqch) = 19.38+-0.05(stat.)+-0.08 (syst.).Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures, Submitted to Euro. Phys. J.